Hi Everyone,

Had my radiator replaced last week and realised I had an airlock as I could hear a wole ocean almost behind my dash board. Ran the car today an although the metal tank with metal cap is full to the top the plastic filler is nearly empty....I ran the car with the heat on to let any bubbles out with the cap on but all that happened was the fluid just flowed out.

Is there anything I should have replaced when doing the radiator? There is no obvious fluid coming out when the car was sat on the drive for 10 or so minutes so no way of telling whether its leaking or perfectly normal to have lost this amount of fluid.

Can anyone help?

 

the plastic filler is ust an overflow. if its empty simply top it up. the level will rise and fall depandant on if the engine/coolant is cold or hot.

 

keep rad cap on and bleed through the header tank, if you squeeze the rad hoses with header tank cap off you should push some air out. Best way is to get an empty pop bottle cut in half and place the top side in header tank and then fill with water to take above the normal filling capacity of the header tank to stop air being sucked back in while bleeding.

 

Thanks...is an airlock common or is it something that can avoided or should have been avoided?

 

airlocks very common on the scooby. they have to filled very slowley.

 

yea agreed, PS make sure you keep your heaters on full hot to make sure you get all the air out of the heater matrix.

 

If the above hasn't worked, try this. It works everytime.

Remove turbo pipe from the header tank, and remove the small pipe from the top of the rad (the one that also goes to the header tank.)

Fill through the turbo pipe with a funnel slowly until the coolant comes from the top of the rad. This has slowly filled the system from the highest point and would have pushed all air out through the rad. Once you see coolant come from the nipple at the top of the rad, replace both hoses and then top up the header tank. Job done!

 

Yep. This is precisely the procedure that ZEN practice (and others)... Tim, the mechanic, explained the 'science' behind it (just as Tucker has) when he was refilling my WRX's system.